Stanton Friedman has no doubts that
some UFOs are alien spacecraft. No doubts that alien wreckage and
bodies were retrieved in the "Roswell incident" of July 1947 near
Roswell, New Mexico. No doubts the government has engaged in a kind
of cosmic Watergate for decades, hiding the truth about UFOs from
the American public.
Friedman worked for 14 years as an industrial nuclear physicist spending "a lot of time on far-out, advanced, highly classified, eventually cancelled research and development programs." He developed an interest in UFOs in the 1950s and has lectured on the subject since 1967, speaking at hundreds of colleges and on radio and television. He has published more than 70 papers on UFOs and is co-author of Crash at Corona: The Definitive Story of The Roswell Incident.
Born in New Jersey, he moved to Canada in 1980 and holds dual US and Canadian citizenship. Despite decades of research, he has never seen a UFO. But then he has never seen Tokyo, he observes, yet it seems a safe bet that it exists. The most common question he gets is why: Why would aliens visit our planet and why would the government cover it up?
The answer to the first is self-preservation, Friedman said.
"I make one assumption about every advanced civilisation, namely that it is concerned about its own security and survival. That means you've got to keep tabs on the primitives in the neighbourhood, particularly those who show signs of being able to bother you."
As for a government cover-up, there are plenty of reasons, Friedman said. For one, the government wants to study and adopt alien technology without other countries catching on. If the presence of intelligent life elsewhere were confirmed, the announcement would lead to a view of ourselves as Earthlings instead of Americans and Russians and so on, Friedman said. And no government wants that, he adds. "Nationalism is the only game in town."
Is Colorado's San Luis Valley a top vacation spot for visitors from other worlds? The valley has long been a hot spot for the unexplained, from cattle mutilations to whispers of secret bases to lights zigzagging across the sky. And for three years, it has been home to the UFO Watchtower, which welcomes humans and aliens alike.
Unable to make a go of her ranch, Judy Messoline opened the UFO Watchtower on Memorial Day 2000. An igloo-shaped, UFO-themed gift shop sits partly under the three-metre tower. The site draws UFO buffs as well as the merely curious. "This year, we've had large buses come in, which has been really nice," Messoline said.
There have been about two-dozen sightings from the tower, from a long, narrow object that zipped across the sky to an object that resembled the bottom of a roulette wheel.
"I don't know if they're little green men or not," Messoline said of the sightings, "but they're strange."
According to a Roper poll commissioned last year by the Sci Fi channel:
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Two-thirds of Americans think there are other forms of intelligent life in the universe.
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Nearly half of those surveyed believe that UFOs have visited the Earth in some form over the years.
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45 per cent believe intelligent life from other worlds has monitored life on Earth.
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Roughly seven in 10 people believe the government does not tell us everything it knows about extraterrestrial life and UFOs.
Aliens have been good guys and bad on the big screen. Here are some notable UFO movies:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Steven Spielberg's beloved tale of curious humans and benevolent aliens was nominated for eight Oscars, but won only for best cinematography. Spielberg also explored first contact in 1982's ET, which featured a downright cuddly alien.
Independence Day (1996) The aliens are definitely not benevolent in this blockbuster starring Will Smith as a hot-shot pilot who kicks alien butt and Bill Pullman as an inspiring president.
The War of the Worlds (1953) This tale of alien invaders, based on the novel by H G Wells, chilled moviegoers long before Independence Day.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Characters, not special effects, dominate in this sci-fi classic. An alien visitor (Michael Rennie) is greeted with paranoia and suspicion upon his arrival on Earth.
Signs (2002) Aliens invade but are rarely seen in this suspenseful tale from M Night Shyamalan.
Bill Radford
